father had mother bring me into the room where he was. I sat by the bed, just as I sit by yours this minute, letting him hold my hand and one of mother's. Mr. Marcy was in New York. O, how tired and hollow-eyed and dying he looked. But he smiled a little at seeing us two there together beside him.
"That's right,' he said softly; 'always keep with your mother, Philip, and remember, Hilda, nothing ought to separate you two but death. Philip,' he went on, 'you're going to grow up to be a man, I hope and expect. I suppose that the best thing I can wish for you is that you may never hear the people you will meet talk of me, nor even read my name in a newspaper. But I want to say to you to-night (for I'm afraid I sha'n't have many words to spare by morning) that I, your father, under the stain to-day of a crime, and believed by almost every body I ever knew in the world, or that you may know, to be a felon—am as innocent as you of what's laid to my charge. Remember, I say this to you on what I believe is my dying-bed, and going before the great God who judges all the world, and who is sometimes the only Knower of what is the
